Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs (blog.google)
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/05/google-deepmind-demis-hassa...
https://www.reuters.com/business/google-shakes-up-ai-leaders...
https://www.discoveryloop.com/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49184960
https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/2085034604172603724, https://xcancel.com/JeffDean/status/2085034604172603724
155 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 8.3 ms ] threadKinsley Gaffe: A mistake whereby a politician inadvertently says something truthful which they had not meant to reveal.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kinsley_gaffe
> Announcing Discovery Loop!
> I am very excited to announce that, along with my longtime friends and collaborators @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix, we are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a Public Benefit Corporation whose mission is to automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress. The four of us have worked together for 14 to 30 years, and have helped build some of the world’s most used products, infrastructure and AI models, and we’re excited to turn our attention to this ambitious endeavor.
Even in indirect ways. OpenAI itself was founded because Musk got fixated on "stopping" Hassabis.
https://www.reuters.com/business/google-shakes-up-ai-leaders...
Oof. Good for Jeff and Sanjay (who just joined Twitter), bu that is a big loss for Google. Google stock is down 5%. It might not be much of an exaggeration to say these two are worth ~$200 billion.
(https://xcancel.com/demishassabis/status/2085034334914769203)
I do wonder if anybody working at Google can give us an insight why the chaos and lack of competitiveness?
Looks like Gemini's sub-par performance is claiming heads
OpenAI and Anthropic went from tiny startups to huge companies. As a consequence the stock options/RSU's offered to the employees paid off a far higher percentage ROI than any stock options a DeepMind (and thus Google) employee would get (since Google is already huge). This disincentivizes people who truly believe in the economically transformative power of AI to work at Google since their benefits will be capped by Google being large + having public company obligations.
OpenAI and Anthropic are in a completely different game, their primary business model is making a product out of advancements that come out of DeepMind and co.
anthropic and open ai doesn't have those people currently as they are private.
1. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iKm2FhpWkuuBojm82/why-i-left...
The bigger deal is the departure of Jeff and Sanjay, rather than Demis moving into a different role.
IS that a promotion or demotion ?
>We’ve got amazing talent, world-class compute and products…
Products are third on the list. Google is an incubator for talent first and foremost. Products are an afterthought